[Coco] NitrOS-9 Level3 problems

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 07 May 2018 07:44:44 Robert Gault wrote:

> In case there are some developer/programmers on the list that don't
> get/read reports from Sourceforge, there are major problems with the
> Level3 portion of the project.
>
> Level3 either will not finish booting or when it does with certain
> system & memory combos, it either freezes on the copyright screen or
> crashes.
> Several years ago there were some boot files and boot disks that
> actually booted. Any ideas about what has happened?
>
> Robert

I came to play with it several years ago now, as the premise of putting 
the heart of nitros9 in one memory block, all the scf stuff in another, 
and all the rbf stuff in a third sounded like a heck of a good idea. But 
the map switching in the boot loader was broken in that it switched to 
the second map, but had no provision to switch back, or to switch to a 
third map. And there are some parts of drivewire that refuse to be so 
cataloged, so some of drivewire would need to be split out into two 
pieces so as to enable the individual modules to be cataloged as rbf 
only or scf only. Ideally, the os9boot file should be processed on a 
module by module basis as opposed to sorting the os9boot file into 3 
such sections.

There is only one map change trigger in the current lashup, and nothing 
to effect the reversion to default, and nothing to trigger the switch to 
the third map. I came to the conclusion that the original author did not 
give us the whole kit, and despite a couple months I spent trying to get 
into his head and fix it according to what was written was beyond me. 
And most assuredly is since the pulmonary embolism that almost put the 
~30~ on my story 3 years ago.

Alan Dekok claims he had it working on 10+ machines for a year, but so 
much has been cut up into smaller modules and submodules, all with 
different names, so doing it to todays code base is likely going to need 
a better understanding of the code than I currently have.

See nitros9/level3/Level3.doc, then make it work as described. I get the 
impression that the _end module is supposed to do more than it currently 
is doing.

Also, the ReadMe.l3 is confusing, as it ends indicating a floppy cannot 
be formatted.

" I've just discovered that CC3Disk11 will crash on trying to format a 
floppy disk under Level III.  It's probably the memory extensions I made 
to CC3Disk, and I'm checking it out."
-EOF-

But whatintuncket is CC3Disk11? It is nowhere in the level3 subdir here, 
despite what is being built by my attempts indicating that the module 
splitting done to level1\2 has been carried over, and CC3Disk is now 
rb1773 etc etc.

I'd run my script to pull and build the latest, but it requires I destroy 
the sandboxes I have setup to protect it. And with taking care of the 
missus thrown in, I would rather setup a build tree here in my home dir, 
and then move it to the /opt dir where apache2 can find it and serve it 
back out to you. But thats not going to happen today. It really needs a 
younger mind anyway.

-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>